Strikes Reveal Solidarity's Weaknesses

May 29, 1988|By Kenneth W. Grundy, Special to The Sentinel

The confrontation is over -- the struggle goes on. Despite the recent two tense weeks of jousting between workers represented by the Solidarity trade union and the Polish government, nothing has been resolved. Poland's biggest labor action since the 1981 crackdown on Solidarity collapsed, its agenda unfulfilled.

The most significant outcome of the confrontation is that it exposed the weaknesses of the state and the workers' movement.

Solidarity was founded eight years ago and outlawed on Dec. 13, 1981. At the time, the government imposed martial law and detained Solidarity's leaders. Even after its leaders were released, Solidarity never fully recovered. As it has sought to rebuild in the factories, the organization has been harassed at every turn.

Leadership has suffered. According to Lech Walesa, who established Solidarity and was the 1983 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, a third of the trade union's top echelon fled to the West and a third backed off. Many consider union activity futile while the communist government of Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski is in power. That leaves the final third of the old leadership left to organize a militant yet frustrated work force.

There are dangers in identifying with Solidarity. After the brutal suppression of the steel workers' strike at Nowa Huta outside Krakow and the collapse of the strike at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk (Walesa's own operating base), the workers are wary. Workers who were not involved in the strikes and those who abandoned the occupation of the plants before the strike was terminated are especially critical of Solidarity. In short, Solidarity has not been able to regain its old appeal throughout the nation.

Some Poles complain that Solidarity's leaders are too political. Others say that outsiders have seized the movement, and still others are fearful of state reprisals. Labor laws have been toughened. Some feel that the union leaders used strong-arm tactics to compel waverers to sustain the sit-ins.

The police put down the Nowa Huta strike by storming the steel mill and pummeling strikers into defeat. At Gdansk, the police surrounded the shipyard and starved the strikers into submission.

Occasionally, smaller strikes were able to achieve limited concessions. But in no case did the government entertain the strikers' political demands.

Jaruzelski insists that the legalization of Solidarity is ''not negotiable.'' ''We shall not allow any anarchy,'' a newspaper quoted a government spokesman as saying. ''I do not see a possibility for a dialogue with those who propose chaos for Poland and a relapse into the phase of self- destruction.'' The Communist Party is prepared to trade economic concessions for the unions' political surrender.

Politically sophisticated workers, on the other hand, insist on trade unions that are free of party control and manipulation. This demand has run through Polish workers' actions since 1970. But it conflicts fundamentally with the Leninist model of trade unions at the service and direction of the party. One joke popular these past few years holds that ''under capitalism, the unions are to protect workers from the capitalists; under socialism, they exist to protect the socialists from the workers.''

Government's unbending line toward Solidarity spelled defeat for the workers. The outlawed union was also challenged on the

right by party-inspired unions and on the left by wildcat strikers and outbreaks of radicalism. Solidarity had to run to keep up with the embittered young workers.

Walesa became a firefighter trying to provide discipline and to defuse potentially explosive situations between hothead strikers and factory guards and the police, and even among the politicized strikers.

For the frustrated Poles, worker self-expression is dead, and their hostility toward the state is nearly complete. Only the police, party informants and the fear of Soviet intervention hold the lid on.

One worker was quoted in a newspaper as saying, ''Nothing can make us afraid. These past eight years have hardened us.'' Unfortunately, not enough of his colleagues are as fearless.

Walesa may be courageous and determined, but he is tiring. At the Gdansk shipyard, according to newspaper accounts, he told the strikers: ''I am not your leader. I'm tired. You need a new Walesa, many more new Walesas.'' But they never materialized.

In the end, Walesa admitted that a lack of support from the rest of the country made the difference. That old zip was missing, that profound alliance between all segments of the people, the church and the union. ''At times we were paralyzed because there were so few of us. If there are people who think we lost, it is because we still lack solidarity.'' Walesa's wife, Danuta, had the last word. On leaving the shipyard after the settlement, according to newspaper accounts, Walesa uttered the Solidarity slogan, ''There is no freedom without Solidarity.'' Danuta interjected caustically, ''There is no Solidarity.''